[Hold on to Nothing] on Bresson's [Simplified Pool]

            Wrap your legs around me, throw your body back into the effortless, lazy tides and feel how the breeze blows for you, how the water chills your skin and my touch a-lines……..

            You are naked before me now, then again, you’ve always been, a spectacle a man as myself adores, always with a sense of drama, always able to cajole a smile, lift you free of anything that may dare to keep the true you from me, from nature, from all that belongs to us at any given moment.

            Now if this tide turns, I’ll turn you along with it. If the water chills you more than any body should be chilled, I’ll find a way to bring myself closer, an impossibility we both would be astounded to witness. So hold on to nothing as I hold on to you, never let go of your drift and buoyancy a-top of the surface as I stand on both feet, waist deep, waiting for you to wake from your dream world, and come into the one I am brewing of you……

Dontrell Lovet't

[A Second-time Rendezvous] on Christer Stromholm's [Nana]

Who was she? Where'd she come from? At which point did she notice Stromholm and his camera? One can look at the photograph of [Nana] taken in Paris during the 1950's and draw blanks to numerous questions. All that we know, is that Stromholm spotted her, his unquestionable depth of eye, at which time she spotted him and what followed was a photograph of [Nana] captured for all time.

Stromholm was lenient, ubiquitous, a hair-triggered snapper who rarely missed any vision worth pursuing, which again, we are brought full circle to the question as to who she was and why it is that Stromholm felt the need to circle around twice, an act rarely committed due to his very disposition, to revisit this woman?

Were they lovers? Mutual admirers? Him the artist driven and pulled by the compulsive, creative urge and she the whore whose only virtue was a whore's existence? Did she, in this slaggish existence, demand money of Stromholm or allowed him to titillate himself while she enjoyed the beloved intrigue of being notice?

All questions, no solid answers; but what we do have, is [Nana]'s and Stromholm's rendezvous, in black and white record........

[Mother & Child] on Diane Arbus's [Woman Carrying Child in Central Park]

[Mother & Child] On Diane Arbus's [Woman Carrying Child in Central Park]

          William Tammeus once quoted “You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around and why his parents will always wave back.” Diane Arbus captures this very image, the bond between mother and child, an indivisible, unbreakable bond, both indefinite and defying all definitions of both natural and social world.

 

          A child nestled in the arms of his mother falls directly into the social compact, the very few, infinite. We were born individually but we weren’t meant to live that way. There is a vast craving for the contact of another, for the love of another, of others, an unspeakable bond which becomes ample to explain all, leaving nothing unsaid even without anything having been said.

 

          The day is a gloomy one, or one advancing quickly, unstoppable into the evening, people are scattering or conglomerate in the backdrop, allowing the scenario to unfold, possessing character into sharp disbelief and what is left, what is stark, apparent and accurate, is an artistic ideal that obliterates everything, a shot of one woman who nourishes a child deep into a dream-world, keeps him safe while he’s dreaming, which nourishes a future, where all humanity finds continuum.